Wednesday, January 8, 2014

Bout of Books 9.0: Tuesday

Good morning! Tuesday was a very successful Bout of Books day. I started one of my Russian classics, Dead Souls, and this book is nothing of what I expected. I think I expected something like "devastating downfall of a tortured Russian soul, caused by moral degredation and mental poverty", but instead, I'm reading a quite funny satire with highly comical characters. Can't say I am complaining though, it certainly makes a good Bout of Books read. I'm almost half way through, so we'll see how today goes!

My copy of Dead Souls.
In Estonian we write Russian names differently (Tšitšikov - Chichikov), so the whole affair with the unpronouncable
Slavic names gets even more complicated :p

The books I read on Tuesday: Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol

Pages read on Tuesday: 194

Books finished: 1

What do my cats think about the books at hand:

Mammucat with Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Apologies about the quality.
Jan took this out of my TBR pile, so unless he finishes it this week, I won't be reading this Harry Potter book during
Bout of Books.

Flavour of the day: Coffee with a little bit of coffee-flavoured cream liqueur (mmm...)

18 comments:

Another successful day, it seems! I was under the impression that Dead Souls was a bucket full of Russian misery and morality with a side of social commentary so I'm pleased to hear it's more of a satire.

I was also under the impression that Dead Souls is "a bucket full of Russian misery", but it's completely something else. It is heavy social commentary though, but it's written in such a humorous way (at least in Estonian - I am actually really curious how this would feel in English).

Thanks, Ellie, it's nice to see that someone appreciates the silly photos :)

Mammucat is so awesome! :-) He picks the best places to sit. I can't believe you'll be reading in 2 languages (if HP comes back to you) during Bout of Books, but then I have no foreign language capabilities whatsoever, sadly. Anyway, I hope all your books turn out to be as good as this one!

The translation I thought about myself, because I can see how English would be maybe a bit limited for the extremely rich language of Gogol. I made a quick research and apparently Pevear & Volokhonsky translation is best be avoided. I personally would try the translation by Bernard Guilbert Guerney, if that copy is still available (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/119075.Dead_Souls), apparently it was approved by Nabokov as the best translation that had come out by his time. The problem is that Gogol uses quite a bit of slang and diminutives, which can make a hilarious reading (I'm just laughing out loud at some of the dialogues), but they are probably quite difficult to authentically translate into English.

I don't know why it feels like most important Russian works deal with the matters of tortured souls and questions of morality - there is actually so many lighter, funnier books that come from Russia! :)